


zero-sum

by daikonjou



Series: a curious case of the man with a unicorn's skull [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fight Club, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daikonjou/pseuds/daikonjou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not the first or last time Shintarou's woken up on a plane with no idea where it's headed or where it had come from. A beginning, of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	zero-sum

**Author's Note:**

> Officially, this is [Andrea](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia)'s fault. Set in the US, so all names will be ordered given first, family last; this also accounts for how quickly they go to given names.
> 
> crossposted from [tumblr](http://aitsura.tumblr.com/post/47460859282/zero-sum-kurobasu-fight-club-au-scribble).

This is, Shintarou reflects, the umpteenth time he’s woken up on a plane with little idea of where it had come from or where he was landing. The window shutter is pushed up, though, and the sky outside is dark. There are no stars; the city below’s too brightly lit for there to be any in the slice of sky he can see from his seat. His shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, cuffs messy.  
  
He pushes his glasses up his nose, and blinks as the man sitting next to him grins sharply. “Thinking of all the things that could go wrong already?” his neighbor says.  
  
“What.”  
  
“You dropped your lucky item earlier,” the man says. “Really ought to be more careful, Shin-chan.”  
  
“Have we met?” Shintarou says.  
  
“Ouch! I told you my name, Shintarou. Ah well. It’s Kazunari. Kazunari Takao.”  
  
Shintarou eyes Kazunari warily. Kazunari stares right back, bits of his rakishly long black hair falling into his gray eyes and doing nothing to dilute the sense that he’s gazing straight into Shintarou’s soul. Shintarou looks away first.  
  
“Oh, don’t be like that Shin-chan. We’re just neighbors on this plane! That’s all. Soon, you ‘n’ me will go our separate ways. Single-serving friends. Convenient, huh?” Kazunari pulls a briefcase out from under the seat in front of him, and that’s when Shintarou notices that it’s the same as his.  
  
“Why do you have the same briefcase as I do?” he blurts, because conversation has never been his strong point.  
  
“Coincidence?” Kazunari smiles toothily, totally at ease with the world. “Or maybe it’s fate, huh?”  
  
“What do you do?”  
  
“I sell soap,” Kazunari says, and pops open the case to reveal several plastic-wrapped unassumingly milky-colored cakes of soap. “On the side, anyway. Some other things too. You?”  
  
“That’s none of your business,” Shintarou says, not at all comfortable with the ease with which Kazunari conducts himself. It’s a little like Kazunari sat on a throne instead of a plane seat, and the world bowed itself at his feet.  
  
“Don’t be shy, Shin-chan,” Kazunari says. “Not every day you get some other Nisei kid as your neighbor, right?” He closes his briefcase up again, fastening the buckles and tossing it back under the seat in front of him.  
  
“Shut up,” Shintarou snaps. “I work a desk job.”  
  
“Oh? Desk job, huh? I would’ve pegged you for a doctor. You’ve got the specs and the look and all.” Kazunari waves vaguely at his face, around where glasses would be if he wore them.  
  
“No, I…” Shintarou swallows. “No. Just a desk job at a car company.”  
  
“Sounds pretty boring.”  
  
“It is,” Shintarou agrees.  
  
“Y’know,” Kazunari says, “when the plane lands we’re gonna be in my town. Let’s have a drink together before you take off to wherever you’re headed.”  
  
“What makes you think I would want to go drinking with you?”  
  
“Why not? Got plans?”  
  
“… No.”  
  
“Well, then. We’ll have a drink, maybe a couple. You look like you could use one,” Kazunari says, and there’s something about that smile of his that makes _no thanks_ lock in Shintarou’s throat.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
As it turns out, Kazunari’s town is coincidentally also Shintarou’s city. Also coincidentally, Shintarou’s little condo has been blown to smithereens. _Gas leak, probably_ , the redhead fireman from the local department with the stupid eyebrows says (he had some name he couldn’t even write properly, stuck to hiragana or even just the roman alphabet most of the time because of the incident where he wrote Inuga instead of Taiga). _Lucky for you you weren’t there._  
  
Kazunari isn’t that much of a novelty. Shintarou thinks he’s acquainted with at least a dozen guys whose parents immigrated from Japan. A lot of permanent residents, a few naturalized citizens. If anything, it’s surprising that Shintarou’s never had a Nisei neighbor on a plane before. At least, not one who thought it was worth anything to mention it.  
  
He goes to the bar Kazunari said he’d be at and sits down across from Kazunari at his table anyway, pointedly ignoring the sticky places on the tabletop.  
  
“You came, Shin-chan! Thought you were gonna ditch me—hey, what’s the matter? You look like you could use that drink even more than before.” Kazunari tilts his glass back, wipes the foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand.  
  
“My condo exploded,” Shintarou says, blunt. He ignores the glass Kazunari puts in front of him, wrinkles his nose at the beer.  
  
“Huh? Exploded like ‘it’s a mess and a pain in the ass to clean up’ or exploded like totally obliterated?”  
  
“The latter. My collection of lucky items has been completely destroyed,” Shintarou says, and shudders to think of the lengths he’ll have to go to replace some of those items.  
  
“You don’t need ‘em, you know,” Kazunari says. He waves at the bartender and orders a pitcher of beer.  
  
“What would you know about that—”  
  
“You don’t need ‘em. What are they based on, anyway? A daily horoscope show?” He takes Shintarou’s stiffening posture as confirmation. “Look, Shin-chan, you need to let that stuff go. What are you going to do, blow your paycheck on lucky items for the rest of your life? Quit sweating the small stuff. It’s all irrelevant.”  
  
“I had a good couch too,” Shintarou grits out. “A closet with a couple decent suits. A nice TV. A mattress that was just right.”  
  
“You really do sweat the small stuff, huh?” Kazunari refills his glass from the pitcher the waitress brought, flips her a couple dollar coins as tip. “I don’t know if nobody ever told you this, but—daily horoscope shows? They’re just TV shows. They don’t run your life. A couch? It’s a thing. Suits? Honestly, who cares about stuff like that? TVs are overrated, and mattresses… we can sleep just about anywhere, you know. It’s not the end of the world if you lose that stuff. It’s just stuff. You buy it, even though you don’t need it. Why do you want it?”  
  
“The lucky items are important,” Shintarou grits out.  
  
Kazunari’s smile goes razor-edged. Something of an excited tingle runs down Shintarou’s spine at the sight. “You make your own luck, Shin-chan. You’re just giving the trinkets the credit for the good things that happen and the blame for anything that happens just because shit happens.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Drink up, Shin-chan,” Kazunari says. “Worry about that shit later. Live in the now. Loosen up a little.”  
  
The beer isn’t the brand that he likes, Shintarou discovers, but he drinks it down anyway, lets Kazunari pour him a refill. They drink until the pitcher’s empty, slap some bills down and trudge out the back door together.  
  
Cracks run over the uneven asphalt face of the parking lot. Shintarou nearly trips on one, sways, regains his balance. Two fixtures on opposite ends of the small lot unevenly light the place, and the light over the back door paints Kazunari’s face with harsh angles.  
  
Kazunari leans in and says against his mouth, “You need a place to stay, don’t you? Just ask—” and they both smell like beer but Shintarou kisses him, because he’s always been piss poor at controlling his impulses when tipsy. “Didn’t take you for that sort of guy,” Kazunari laughs, when he pulls away. “Maybe I should’ve tried that one on the plane. Scandalized that lady who was staring at you for most of the flight.”  
  
“Shut up,” Shintarou says. His ears flush red.  
  
“Make me.” Kazunari grins, all teeth. “It’s been a while since I’ve had some fun.”


End file.
